The Level Step system is the key aspect of terrain generation in World Creator and the main reason behind its fast terrain generation speed (aside from utilizing heavily GPU-optimized filters). This article briefly explains what the system is and how to make the most out of it.
When selecting a 1k terrain with 1/4th precision, World Creator does not only compute the terrain on a 4k map and display it to you. Instead, it iteratively works with an upsampling algorithm: starting on a 2x2px grid and increasing to 4x4px, 8x8px, and so on; doubling the resolution at each step.
This is the basis of the level-step interface that is present in each filter and various other UI elements throughout World Creator. As such, adjusting the strength of a filter at level 8 modifies the influence of that filter on the 8th texture in the upsampling chain, which equates to the 8th or 256x256px texture.
Upsampling allows World Creator to work with different resolution versions of a terrain, which significantly reduces rendering time. For example, with particle-based erosion, the sediment must move from where it is being eroded to where it settles. Sediment may have to travel considerable distances depending on the surrounding terrain. If this process is calculated on a high-resolution image, the sediment may have to travel several hundred pixels, all of which will need to be processed. Working at lower resolutions means that the algorithm requires fewer steps to cover the same distance on the map, resulting in a significant reduction in computation time.
An additional advantage of the upsampling workflow is the impact the lower terrain levels have on the shape of the entire terrain. This effect can be observed in the following pictures where the low and medium terrain levels mainly impact the overall shape of the generated terrain, whereas higher levels contribute minor details to the final terrain.
This can again be observed clearly in the two merged images below. Although the combination of low and medium levels makes the most significant contribution to the final terrain form, the extra high levels are primarily useful for producing a more defined effect on the ultimate resolution.
In general, filters operate more quickly on lower levels. That is because just about all filters/layers operate on a per-pixel basis. On level 8, it would represent 256x256px, i.e., 65,536 pixels. On the other hand, a texture at level 11 measures 2,048 x 2,048px, i.e., a total of 4,194,304 pixels. Even though modern GPUs are very efficient at executing such parallelized processes and World Creator employs highly optimized and sturdy algorithms, you can observe how the higher levels may become more expensive. To achieve maximum performance, try decreasing the higher levels to maintain a visually pleasing result and avoid unnecessary computational overhead. This is particularly true for the erosion and simulation filters because they frequently run multiple iterations per level per pixel, making higher levels even more costly.
Shape layers generally have a lower performance hit with the level system. When working with shape layers, the main consideration is how much detail you want to include in your terrain and how strong the filter effects should be.
By looking at the images below, it's clear that the shape layer becomes sharper as the level step increases because it's blended with the terrain at a higher resolution.
On the other hand, if you look at the same terrain with filters, you'll see that the effect the filter stack has on it diminishes at a higher level step. This occurs because the filters have fewer levels to carry out their work, and they tend to overlook the lower levels, which frequently have more significant effects on the general terrain shape. This was already explained above.
It is important to comprehend how World Creator manages Terrain Size and Detail to effectively handle sizing and detail when using World Creator terrains in other applications like Unity, Unreal, Blender, Cinema4D and others.
The size of the terrain in World Creator is measured in meters. For example, a terrain size of 1024 by 1024 indicates that it is 1024 metres wide and 1024 metres long.
Generally, terrains have sizes that are power-of-two, such as 512 by 512, 1024 by 1024, 2048 by 2048, 4096 by 4096, and so on. However, the good news is that the terrain system in World Creator also allows terrain sizes that are not power-of-two, such as 463 by 271 or 3674 by 2839. Therefore, you can use any value for the width and length of your terrain. However, it is important to note that certain applications may require a terrain size that is a power of two to function correctly (please refer to the application's documentation).
Precision is another important parameter in World Creator that greatly influences terrain detail. Imagine a terrain covering an area of roughly 1024 meters by 1024 meters. This equates to a total of 1,048,576 pixels (1024 multiplied by 1024). Each pixel represents a 1-meter by 1-meter square. This already provides a decent level of detail, but what if a higher level of detail was desired, mapping 0.5 meters squared for each pixel?
For this scenario, World Creator allows you to modify the precision. The default precision setting is 1 meter, however, you can increase it to more precise values, for example, 1/2 meter, 1/4 meter, 1/8 meter, etc. By doing so, World Creator can generate a more detailed terrain without altering the terrain size. As a result, it maps the terrain area visible in the viewport to a more detailed depiction.
Please note that higher precision leads to more pixels in general. A 1024 by 1024 terrain with 1/2 precision creates a height map that is one-fourth the size of a 1024 by 1024 terrain with 1m precision. It is important to be aware of this because higher detail results in a more significant performance impact on your GPU and larger exported maps
In addition to the terrain size and detail precision, there is a seed value utilized to generate the initial terrain shape with random elevation values. The initial terrain shape remains constant for a given seed number. A new initial terrain shape is created by changing the seed.
In World Creator, a terrain consists of biomes. Per the official definition, a biome is an area classified based on the species living in the location. The temperature range, soil type, and the amounts of light and water are unique characteristics of a particular place that determine niches for specific species, enabling scientists to define the biome.
To apply this definition to World Creator, it is crucial to keep things as realistic, yet simple as possible. Climate changes are highly complex and require a considerable amount of time to simulate several hundred years to achieve real-world scenarios. Nonetheless, such a workflow would be excessively intricate and challenging to manage using a computer application. World Creator does things somewhat differently as we must consider that, in most situations, users simply want to create a biome instead of fully computing it automatically based on a large number of parameters that must be comprehensively simulated.
In World Creator each project has one base terrain which is then modified by the different biomes below it. Each biome comprises a set of filters to adjust and shape the terrain, a range of materials to tint the terrain, an array of objects to position on the terrain, and localised simulations such as water, debris, and sand.
In addition, World Creator provides two main ways to distribute your biomes on your terrain. You can either use Biome Layers that allow manual sculpting and painting on the base terrain or the distribution stack that comes with each biome to procedurally place you biome using .
Besides the base terrain, the recommended approach to building the shape of your terrain is to use . Shape Layers are a collection of tools that allow you to sculpt, design and modify terrains. The reference fully documents and gives an overview of each layer, in brief these tools include:
Allows you to create or modify a terrain by sculpting, whether you start from nothing or use an existing and procedurally generated one. You can mix and match by using traditional design methods along with procedural ones without any issues. You can also tailor a generated terrain to meet your specific requirements.
Enables you to place existing elevation or color maps onto the terrain as stamps. Think of it as assembling or modifying terrain using the terrain stamps. For instance, you can import a custom volcano and position it onto your terrain within World Creator, along with its corresponding color map if required.
It is somewhat similar to Biome Base Shape Styles because each procedural layer has its own generator. For instance, there is an option named Volcano which can be utilized to create a volcano complete with conventional parameters like Crater Radius, Crater Depth, and so on.
It allows you to import real world data directly from MapTiler. Just like Google Maps or Bing Maps, MapTiler is a worldwide map service provider. World Creator has a direct connection to their service, allowing you to stream real world earth data directly into World Creator. This includes elevation and colour maps. However, you will need a MapTiler account to enable this functionality within World Creator. More details on this will be covered later.
Enables you to create a vector path for the easy creation of simple rivers, paths, roads, mountain ranges, cliffs, canyons, and more. It is entirely vector-based and straightforward to use.
Allows you to create a polygon by placing individual vertices. The resulting shape can then be modified with an inner and outer fall and can be used to create plains, mountains or lakes.
Allows you to import your own custom 3d geometry into World Creator and add it to your terrain.
River Layers allow you to add rivers and valleys to your terrain. They offer many different river types with full customisation to create your ideal river network.
Shape Layers are movable, scalable, and rotatable. The elements can adapt to your transformations, filters, and materials applied. Blending effects can also be applied for seamless integration with the underlying terrain and with each other.
Filters are applied to customize the terrain in a particular manner. Examples of filters that can be used are Erosion, applying a depletion effect on the terrain, and Sediment, which applies additional material onto the terrain. Filters can be combined and adjusted to produce a particular appearance or type of terrain. More about Filters can be read .
are applied to add color to the terrain. World Creator provides several texture material types that can additionally be used with gradient coloring based on the gradient distribution stack.
World Creator allows you to populate your landscape with your own custom objects. This can be everything from vegetation to rocks, or hero assets like castles or cities. are either available on the biome level or as scene objects under Scene and can either me placed manually or using the distribution stack procedurally.
allow you to simulate effects like debris, snow, water or sand on your terrain. They can be either applied on the biome level or for the whole terrain.
You can create masks along specific terrain features like , , , , and more, using what World Creator calls . You can combine these distributions to create realistic terrains with amazing details.
Distributions can also be used as filters and objects. For instance, you can apply a terrace filter to a designated slope range to create non-uniform landscapes.
The other important aspect is the capability to add to Distributions to further customize and refine them. For instance, you may blur a distribution to create a more seamless blend or invert it entirely.
Mask layers enable you to create masks that you can use for filters, materials, or later objects. Masks are typically utilized to describe an area that has been impacted by something. For example, in the image below, a mask is combined with a terrace filter to create terraces at a particular position on the terrain.
Excellent! This concise overview of how World Creator handles terrains and the accompanying tools will help you comprehend the entire concept, along with subsequent articles. Do not worry, as we will provide increasingly comprehensive explanations throughout this documentation.
